


it was never about you (everything is always about me)

by kwritten



Series: Femlash February 2016 [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bullying, F/F, Self-Hatred, Wizarding Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:46:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6131141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pansy keeps running into Luna when she's feeling her lowest, too bad she hates Luna. Too bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was never about you (everything is always about me)

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: luna/pansy + coincidences

 

Hogwarts wasn’t very big if you sat down and thought about it, thought about all that history and all those paintings with eyes that remembered and carried secrets no one thought to ask after, as if secrets don’t come back to haunt you long after you have forgotten to keep them close, as if secrets don’t linger in every shadow around every corner of this tiny castle pretending to be a school. 

 

“I hear they got Loony Luna last week,” someone whispered in the common room as she passed. She forced herself to keep her chin up, her eyes narrowed, her back straight and shoulders back. It was happening, it was all happening, all those years of being told she was on the wrong side in the wrong House had the wrong blood the war was back (he was here he was here he was here) and this time she’d be on the fucking winning fucking side if she had to kill every part of her that she didn’t require to breathe and move. 

What else was living but breathing and eating and fighting and moving and sleeping and dying?

(She’d never been taught to seek anything else but tomorrow and maybe that was her problem. Maybe she should have been looking for something else.)

Someone laughed, “Filthy blood traitor, I hope she screams.”

_She’s screaming she’s screaming she’s screaming she’s screaming shescreaming shescreaming shcreaming shcreaming screaming screaming screaming._

Pansy held her head up high and walked past. 

(She’d already lost, might as well hitch her ride to a falling star and call it winning.)

 

“Why are you crying?”

_Shut up shut up shut the FUCK up leave me alone don’t touch me don’t look at me I’m invisible I am a wall I am a ghost I will float through you and you won’t fucking see me shut up shut up shut up._

“Pansy?” Luna cocked her head to one side in that way she did that suggested that she could see something that no one else could. Or like she had spent far too much time in the presence of a very curious cat.

 _Shut up shut up **shut up**_.

Pansy walked past with her chin tucked into her chest, pretending that she wasn’t tear-stained and rumpled with a bruise on her hip and a hickey on her neck that she never asked for and never wanted (but she said she did she said she did she crooked her finger and she smiled that smile and she held his hand and pulled him into a corner and sighed under his lips and his bruising fingers and that’s all her fault all her fault all her fault) but it’s all she’s good for so wipe your fucking eyes and walk tall.

Luna let her walk by and said nothing and didn’t watch her go and that felt almost worse than anything that had come before.

(She really was as invisible as she feared.) 

 

“ _Shit_ , Merlin’s balls,” Pansy grumbled under her breath, pulling her head up to look around, but the library was empty. There had been a Quidditch match that night – Slytherin vs. Gryffindor. She didn’t even know who won. 

(She couldn’t fucking care less if she tried.)

Her ink container tipped over and spilled all over the five-inch essay due in the morning, obscuring everything in the middle (everything that mattered). One loose robe sleeve and she’d have to start all over. 

(She had that kind of luck.)

“Oh _heavens_ ,” a soft voice cooed above her head and the parchment was swept away by a thin hand. 

Pansy watched with narrowed eyes as Luna murmured something under her breath at the parchment. When she handed it back, the ink stain was gone. (And her handwriting was clearer than ever.)

She beamed down at Pansy, “I’m _terribly_ clumsy.”

She skipped away before Pansy could respond, humming happily to herself. 

 

“Come _on_ , Pans, just take _one bite_. No one gives a shit about your stupid diet.”

And so she had. 

And now she was hiding in one of the towers no one ventured to because her arms were covered in a rash and was fucking _tired_ of whining at Pomfrey like the bitch even fucking cared. It hadn’t even been any _good_ , of course. They’d known that, before they begged her to try it. They’d done it on purpose. 

It’s not like she hadn’t gleefully bullied Eliza in year two to develop an eating disorder over the span of the last seven months and then _laughed_ in her face after hearing her throw up the remains of her breakfast that very morning. 

It’s not like she was _innocent_. 

It’s not like she hadn’t seduced Stan just to prove that she could, even if he _was_ dating her “best friend” ha. 

What was friendship anyway? 

Friendship was hiding in a tower instead of going to the nurse because it’s the third time that year she willfully ate something she _knows_ she’s fucking allergic to, just to save face. 

“Why the fuck aren’t you wearing shoes?” Pansy spit out exasperatingly when Luna rounded the corner, her bare-toes bright red with cold. The drafts in Hogwarts seemed to be getting worse.

_Why the fuck are you here why are you here why **you** why do you always find me why are you always here when I’m trying to hide why do you always see me when I am invisible why the fuck is it always  you?_

Luna shrugged, “Someone stole them.”

“Off your feet?”

Luna blinked at her as though the question wasn’t worth answering. She scanned Pansy up and down, in a way that made Pansy feel like ( _shove my tongue down your throat listen to you whimper feel how soft your thighs are leave scratch marks on your pale skin where no one can see_ ) something was crawling in her stomach that she was desperate to let out. After a moment of watching Pansy scratch at her arms, Luna reached into the pocket of her robe, pulled out a leaf that looked a little like mint, and handed it to Pansy.

“This should help.”

She was gone before Pansy could thank her. 

The itching stopped. Of course it fucking did. 

(It was either that or die. She didn’t want to admit that she was hoping Luna would help her with the less obvious solution to her problem.)

 

 

“I _hate_ you,” she snarled. 

She snarled a lot these days. It made everyone else think that there was no way she was capable of sobbing or screaming or crying or whimpering. It made the whole fucking world believe that she was as fierce as she knew she was weak.

“Most people do,” Luna said calmly, unperturbed. 

Her fingers skimmed up Pansy’s arms and her hips lifted off the wall slightly, bumping her thin bones into Pansy’s legs. She didn’t smile or frown or push away or do anything that Pansy had expected her to do, when she’d found Luna wandering down a dark hallway on her own in the middle of the night and pushed her by the throat against the wall. 

Pansy pressed her lips back against Luna’s thin ones and hummed low in her throat. “Aren’t you going to tell me I shouldn’t,” she mouthed against Luna’s neck. It wasn’t a question. 

Nothing with Luna was ever a question. 

(Maybe everything with Luna _was_ a question and Pansy was just pretending not to hear the answers.)

“No,” Luna’s voice could hold a smile like nothing Pansy had ever experienced. 

It made her hate her more. 

Made her want to tear Luna’s flesh from her bones and lick up all the blood off the floor; she’d be laughing laughing laughing and Luna wouldn’t make a sound. 

Pansy’s fingernails scraped up Luna’s legs and they shuddered in chorus, like an ancient play, like a poem, like every romance they weren’t. 

“Why not? Shouldn’t you tell me not to hate you?”

Luna pressed a long finger inside of Pansy and she whispered in her ear as Pansy panted ( _Pansy panted Pansy panted Panspanted Panspanted pansted pansted panted panted_ ), “You hate all the wrong things and you know it.”

_She’s not a fucking voice for your own hate you hate you hate ~~you could love her~~ you hate all the wrong things all the wrong things._

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked afterwards, Luna’s hair a tangled mess and Pansy’s cheeks flushed and a bright red scratch trailing down the back of Luna’s neck from Pansy’s fingernails as she came with her hands wrapped around Luna’s throat. 

_Power power power this is all about power you just like having her beneath you she doesn’t even like it when you touch her she hates you as much as you pretend to hate her what do you think she’s getting out of this fucking you in the hallway you are the weak one and you’re pretending to be so fucking strong._

“Which part?” Luna adjusted her skirt around her hips. 

“I hate all the wrong things?”

“Figure it out,” Luna walked away. 

_She’s not your fucking saint your fucking martyr you aren’t kissing an angel she’s just as human as you just not as fucking worthless._

 

 

“I heard they got Loony Luna last week,” someone said with a laugh at breakfast. 

That’s what they did now, tallied up the losses and wins of every previous day and called it victory and called it a war.

“Fucking blood traitor,” someone else said gleefully. 

They convinced themselves they were winning. 

(She’d already lost so what next?)

 

 

“What are you doing here?” 

The war was over (the war was never going to be over, they all carried it in their chests it was a part of them all and there was no letting go of it) and they shouldn’t be running into each other like this (not again not again not again ~~not like before~~ ).

“Walking,” Pansy retorted defensively.

Luna’s eyes were hollow, there was a thinness to her shoulders and her cheeks that the months of freedom should have fixed. Maybe she’d always carry the war on her skin. 

“Whatever,” Luna breezed past, but Pansy caught her elbow. 

“What did you mean?”

Luna fixed her with those hollow eyes and it was like looking at a ghost and not a girl not a woman not a living breathing thing walking down a London street she couldn’t be real she was too haunted to be real, “You hate yourself, you should hate the thing you turned yourself into instead.”

Pansy stared at her, nonplussed. 

She cleared her throat, “Do you?”

Luna’s gaze scanned the length of her body and in the instant before she pulled out of Pansy’s grasp and disappeared, she whispered, “I do _now_.”

 

 

War is carried in the hearts in the minds in the skin it is a memory a feeling a constant pressure on your ribs. Some people walk into war having already been carrying it for so long on their childish shoulders, there is a war in every heart despite the history books telling you that war is quantifiable. Everyone always loses. There is no winning a war like this. 

 

 

“Can we stay this way?” Pansy leaned back against Luna’s side as she read one of her bizarre tombs about shit Pansy didn’t care about but seemed to mean so much to Luna. 

“We are the way we are,” Luna answered, distracted. 

Pansy played with Luna’s fingers, “I like myself this way.”

_I never like myself I hate myself I hate how weak I am with you I hate how much I crave you your skin your taste your touch I want to hate you and I tell you I hate you but I love I love I love you so desperately I have no room to hate myself._

“Too bad,” Luna pursed her lips. “You refuse to stop hating me.”

“Yeah,” Pansy said regretfully. “Too bad.”


End file.
